Massive star ejected from young star cluster (artist's impression)

This illustration shows the heavy runaway star 30 Dor #016 rushing away from a nearby stellar nursery at more than 400 000 kilometres per hour. The runaway is the most extreme case of a very massive star that has been kicked out of its home by a group of even heftier siblings.

Tantalizing clues from three observatories, including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s newly installed Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), and some old-fashioned detective work, suggest that the star may have travelled about 375 light-years from its suspected home, a giant star cluster called R136.